Educational Policy
As seen on ABC News' 20/20, October 13, 1995
War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse
Professor Siegfried Engelmann,
University of Oregon
Profiled in a very favorable October 1995 interview with John Stossel
of ABC TV's 20/20 program, Prof. Engelmann is an educator with more than
35 years of experience teaching elementary school children, dealing with public
school administrators, and managing private training organizations.
In general terms, this book is a penetrating examination of our public schools.
As a Professor of Special Education for more than 25 years, Professor Engelmann
also understands all of the popular educational theories and buzzwords. Using
his knowledge of both theory and practice, Professor Engelmann gives both
professionals and laypeople such as parents and legislators examples of how
educational theorists and public educators have neglected the trees while
concentrating on the forest.
In more specific terms, this details Professor Engelmann's participation, as a
developer of Direct Instruction methods and materials, in the federal
government's Project Follow Through comparison of instructional methods, and
how, after spending half a billion dollars, the results of the study
were never formally published.
Anyone interested in more fully understanding the debate surrounding our public educational systems should read War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse.
Quality softcover, Index, Stock # 342110, ISBN 0-89420-287-1 - $19.95 |
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A Tyrant In Cap and Gown
Carl W. Salser
An analysis of the problems and failings of our country's educational
system, as seen by an observer who warned educators and the public more
than two decades before the "Nation at Risk" report and others
that proliferated during the 1980s. The author discusses a wide range of
difficulties and frustrations faced by administrators, teachers, parents,
taxpayers, and legislators . . . never trying to place blame on any one group
-- we are all to blame for the state of our schools -- but with the position
that we can only find solutions for problems we can understand and discuss
fully.
Hardbound, 259 pages, stock # 110055, ISBN 0-89420-100-X --
$18.95
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Decline and Fall of American Education
— And a Blueprint for its Resurrection
Carl W. Salser & Fred West, Ph.D.
Normally, a civilization begins to fall apart in little bits and pieces.
Then, as the process accelerates, in larger and larger chunks. But looking
back, through the haze of history, historians tend to see only the larger,
more dramatic chunks and not the bits and pieces that actually started
the decline and fall.
The authors, two well-known longtime educators, explain why every significant
reform or change in American education has been thwarted and frustrated and by
whom; and why it takes more and more money and people . . . to teach less and
less to fewer and fewer. The also explain why there will be no substantive
change, no improved achievement, no cost-effectiveness . . . until the "Seven
Deadly Problems in Education" are either resolved or circumvented.
Quality softcover, 300 pages, Bibliography, Index, Appendices,
Stock # 440500, ISBN 0-89420-283-9, $19.95 |
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As seen on CBS News' 60 Minutes
The Last Angry Principal
Howard L. Hurwitz, Ph.D
Dr. Hurwitz uses his half-century of experience in the schools to puncture
the many balloons floated by "reformers," who know little about how schools
should be run and whose alleged reforms would further ruin our faltering
schools. In The Last Angry Principal, we have a great human interest
story of a compassionate disciplinarian in a time of eroding standards. When
after decades of success his policies were repeatedly first endorsed and then
reversed by weak superiors, flip-flopping in face of political pressure, he
demanded more uniform decision-making, he was dismissed. A measure of his
effectiveness may be that local parents barricaded him in his office, setting
the stage for a confrontation that made national headlines and coverage on CBS'
60 Minutes program.
The Last Angry Principal is a book that you cannot afford to miss, at a
time when the "educational crisis" is seen as a top priority, not only on
Capitol Hill and by all of the nation's governors, but every presidential
candidate as well.
Quality Softcover, 250 Pages, Index, Stock #110220,
ISBN 0-89420-255-3, $17.95 |
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Best of Hurwitz on Education
Howard L. Hurwitz, Ph.D
Dr. Hurwitz is the only principal in U.S. history whose school and
college columns have appeared weekly for 14 years, following his 40 years
of frontline experience. Selected from more than 1,400 columns, Dr. Hurwitz
offers "an eye-opening collection of bristling commentary on schools and
colleges." "The unconventional wisdom of an experienced educator . . . will
inform and stimulate you."
Quality Softcover, 231 pages, Index, stock #110235, ISBN 0-89420-285-5, $16.95
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Teacher Unions: Is the End Near?
(Audiocassette)
Myron Lieberman, Ph.D.
As a lifetime member of the National Education Association, Dr. Lieberman
is in a unique position to observe and comment on public employee unions.
Lieberman is Senior Research Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center
at Ohio's Bowling Green University. His books include Public Education: An
Autopsy, The NEA and the AFT: Teacher Unions in Power and Politics, Privatization
and Educational Choice, Beyond Public Education, Public School Choice: Current
Issues/Future Prospects, and Teacher Union Bargaining: Practice and Policy.
The occasion of this talk was made particularly timely by a strike by the
Oregon Public Employees Union. Dr. Lieberman offered this devastating assessment:
"They are a private group withholding a public service in order to
get the public policy they want. You and I can't do that. We can't go out and
halt some important public service until we get the policies we want." Although
he defended collective bargaining rights, Lieberman suggests that some public
unions function as political action committees, and that they have crossed the
line between union and political representation . . . and should be disbanded
on that basis.
A Cascade Policy Institute production,
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